Standards such as MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) and H.264 have been known as standards for video compression coding. Image processing apparatuses that perform such compression coding perform intra prediction and inter prediction. According to the intra prediction, a motion search is performed so as to detect motion vectors of macroblocks (MBs) into which a screen to be encoded (referred to as “currently processed image”) is divided. The motion search is a process to search out a block similar to a macroblock that is a target of processing from a reference image that is temporally previous or subsequent to the currently processed image. A reduced image may be employed in the motion search. (See, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 2007-158855 and 2011-055554.) Pixels are uniformly reduced along the horizontal direction and the vertical direction of the currently processed image and the reference image. For example, even-numbered pixels are eliminated to generate a reduced image. A motion search is performed using this reduced image, and based on its results, the search range of the motion search is determined in the currently processed image and the reference image.